When the lights go out and we are left in the pitch black, typically the first thing we search for is a source of light – a flashlight, a candle, etc. Without light, we are prone to stumble and fumble. Sometimes the smallest things will trip us up in our quest to find what we are looking for. Also, along the way we will grasp several wrong items as we probe for the right one.
Spiritually speaking, the same condition currently exists today. There is a pitch black that has descended upon this world. Because of it, people are wandering blindly, grabbing and taking a hold of whatever they run into, believing it to be a means of helping themselves.
In the darkness, they have grabbed a hold of guns for protection; politicians or parties for guidance; money for deliverance; man-made or contrived philosophies for salvation; science for true knowledge; war for accomplishing peace; poisons for healing; the unjust for justice; and the list goes on and on as the blind continue to follow the blind.
The world as an overwhelming whole has rejected the ONE thing that can shed light on these subjects and give us the answers we are looking for: God and His Way as outlined by the Bible. Of course, those who have not read and studied the pages of the “Owner’s Manual” will scoff at the idea that this could possibly be the solution for the ills of mankind.
Isaiah describes the condition of man in this way: “Therefore justice is far from us, Nor does righteousness overtake us; We look for light, but there is darkness! For brightness, but we walk in blackness! We grope for the wall like the blind, And we grope as if we had no eyes; We stumble at noonday as at twilight; We are as dead men in desolate places” (Isaiah 59:9-10).
BUT, before we begin to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to, we need to reflect on whether we still have blind-spots, things God wants us to see, but that we cannot notice because we are not walking completely in the light? Do we see everything clearly that we need to, or is it vague because we have not come completely out of the shadows?
We were once floundering in the dark, trying out the misdirected ways of the world, but God in His mercy has turned on the light for us, “in the hope that [we] might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us…” (Acts 17:27).
